Chapter 15

All in all, Azrael couldn't complain about the way things were going.

The next day Murkrow had returned with not a pamphlet from Cerulean's gym door, but the whole damned box of them. Azrael had been laughing out loud, rewarding Murkrow liberally and wishing that she'd been more specific in her request. However, no one could argue that the Pokemon had certainly delivered. With her competence proven to her mother, Azrael was allowed to pack her things and set a date to go out into the world a week from that day.

That had been a week ago. In the meantime, Azrael had packed. She didn't really have to think hard on what to bring with her—Azrael had never owned very many things, and decided to go Spartan for her journey to make the commute easier on her back. Three turtlenecks in green and black, three lighter t-shirts of the same shades, her most comfortable pairs of jeans and cargo pants with seemingly endless pockets, all her savings from birthdays and Christmas, undergarments and socks galore (courtesy of her mother), and a large jacket (also courtesy of her mother, in spite of the fact that it was the middle of July). Remarkably she'd been able to fit all of that in one saddlebag, although it was overstuffed.

Azrael had decided not to tell her mother about the shuriken she'd found in the storage room, but she had removed it carefully—nicking her arm in the process—and wrapped it carefully in a grey cloth, storing it in her music box. The box was one of the few feminine things she owned, carved out of mahogany and inlaid with lighter designs in oak. The scene depicted the "haunted" Pokemon tower in Lavender Town, complete with Ghastlys and Haunters drifting around with their mouths and eyes open like dark holes.

Her father had carved it for her, and—even though Azrael's mother had thought it was a terribly macabre thing to give a young girl—she loved it.

Even now she was reluctant to leave it behind, even though she'd promised her mother that she'd be back within a two-month time period. She was accustomed to seeing it every morning, and often times would contemplate its worn-smooth surface when sleep eluded her at night. It was so intricate that she almost always found some new detail each time she studied it.

Now she replaced it on her shelf and studied her room. It was fairly empty, as she'd never had very many material possessions as a child, but there was a certain air of well-loved comfort that Azrael knew she wouldn't find anywhere else.

She closed the door and heaved an unwelcome sigh. She had acted over-confident and in complete control in front of her mother, but the fact remained that the girl had never wandered farther than her forest, Viridian City, or Pallet Town in her life. Once, when she was too young to remember, they'd all lived in Fuchsia City—but it hardly counted, as she couldn't remember a thing about it.

Now she was about to embark on her own journey, flying solo in the truest sense of the word for the first time. She couldn't deny that the thought of true independence lifted her spirits like nothing else—but she also couldn't deny how apprehensive she was. Living alone with no one but her mother had rubbed off on her a bit—she was, indeed, as antisocial as they came.

Azrael's mother was waiting for her at the door. Her eyes were brimming with unshed tears, as Azrael had known they would be. For a moment they stood there, both regarding each other with new respect; Azrael, for being old enough to stand on her own, and her mother for being big enough to let her.

Then something clicked, and for the first time in years they truly hugged each other, neither one of them stilting or awkward. The embrace lasted for a long while, neither of them saying anything or feeling that they needed to. When Azrael pulled away, she, too, felt almost like crying.

Returning her bag to her shoulder, she started out into the afternoon, with her mother's voice calling after her, "You be careful, now!"

"Wouldn't dream of doing anything else," Azrael called back over her shoulder, waving and giving her a reassuring smile.

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It took Azrael maybe ten minutes to get to Viridian City, and another three hours before she'd wound her way through Viridian Forest to Pewter City. She decided to stop there for the night, since trying to make her way blind through Mount Moon didn't seem like a great idea. She figured that it was a good idea to heal up her team and get her mission plan set up for a while, and she didn't mind idling in Pewter for two or so days—but the thought of staying in one place for longer than that daunted her. She was sure that her mother thought she was still in Viridian exploring the outskirts of the town, but Azrael was blazing down her path with the haste of someone on a life-or-death mission.

The Pokemon Center in Pewter City was much larger than the one in Viridian had been, offering much more room and board for the night. Azrael checked herself into a room, silently thanking whatever corporation was supporting these places and allowing them to stay free of charge, and picked up her key from the front desk.

Halfway down the hallway, someone crashed into her head-on.

Although Azrael had always been quick on her feet, she was tired beyond belief from the trek through the forest and was knocked flat on her back. Her bag went flying down the corridor, and all at once a boy with very blond hair and very wide eyes was kneeling beside her. Lifting her head from the ground, Azrael stared at him, taking a moment to comprehend the string of words he was bombarding her with.

"I'm so sorry, ma'am, here, let me help you up, are you all right? I really am sorry, I never watch where I'm going, shouldn't have been running indoors like that, is this your bag? I'm sorry, did you hit your head hard?"

"Um—" Azrael found herself pulled to her feet with surprising ease. The boy was about six or eight inches taller than her, but he had still lifted her like she weighed little more than the bag he also picked up and dusted off from the ground. "I'm okay, really. It's all right. Yeah, that's mine," she said, taking the offered bag and returning it to her shoulder. "It's okay."

He didn't seem to hear her. "Are you sure you're feeling okay? I hit you pretty hard."

"Yes, I am fine. Where were you off to in such a hurry?" she tried, desperate to get him off the topic of her health.

He seemed to remember all of the sudden, and an expression of utter horror crossed over his smooth features. "Oh, that's right. My Rattata got away," he said, peering anxiously down the hall. "Have you seen it?"

Azrael shook her head in a negative, and the, inexplicably, "Do you need help finding it?"

The boy looked surprised for one second, and then smiled. "That would be great."

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The boy, who had introduced himself as Orion, lead Azrael back out into the lobby of the Pokemon Center. There they proceeded to look beneath the benches and tables—much to the confusion of their fellow patrons—in search of the boy's violet rat. Orion was babbling incessantly all the while, glancing over his shoulders occasionally and reflexively twitching when Azrael moved around him and surprised him by turning up in a different spot than he'd last seen her.

Overall, he looked like someone who had something to hide.

Azrael was getting more and more uneasy by the minute, but, never one to go back on a promise, she held true to her word and searched for his Pokemon with him—although she made any excuse to be on the other side of the room from him.

When he finally exclaimed, "Ah-HAH! Ratty, there you are!" some odd half hour later, Azrael was overcome with relief. She was tired and uncoordinated, in dire need of some shuteye, but forced a vague smile in Orion's general direction when she heard his proclamation of triumph. The Pokemon seemed genuinely all right with being captured again, even though it seemed to go against its nature to be in captive.

"Real glad you found him," she said, stifling a yawn and standing up straighter to crack a few pockets of air out of her spine. "I'll be turning in for the night. It's been nice meeting you."

"Good night, Azrael," he said, and she almost didn't recognize her own name. Having been around her mother exclusively for years—to whom she would always be known as "Azzy"—the sound of her full name from this strange boy was exotic and new.

"Night," she said, shaking herself out of her silent reverie. Then, as she was turning away:

"Um, what are you doing tomorrow morning?"

She paused in mid-step and almost collided with a wall. The familiar question had thrown her mind from its track of sleep. "I… I'm going to stock up on things for the trip through Mount Moon, probably," she said. And then, almost cringingly, "Why?"

"Well, I don't know, I just thought that maybe I could, you know, treat you to breakfast or something," he said, rubbing the back of his blond head with one large hand and pulling it through the top of his scalp down over his face, which was looking rather pale. "I mean, I did kind of smash into you, and you did help me find Ratty." He appeared finished, and looked at her hopefully.

"Um," Azrael said. She wasn't at all sure what the best way to decline would be. Regretting her years of living as a hermit and her utter ineptitude at social skills, she groped wildly in the dark for the right words. "Um, well…" and then, for the second time that night: "Sure, why not."

Light seemed to shine from Orion's good-featured face. "Excellent! I'll meet you out here at about seven thirty, eight?" he asked. Azrael was silently appalled at how late this boy slept in. he seemed to mistake her expression and fumbled across new words. "Well, if that's kind of early we can make it nine, I totally understand, I mean, it's late and you look tired—oh, no, I didn't mean you look tired, just that you seem tired, and I—"

"Seven-thirty is fine," Azrael interjected, becoming quite familiar at interrupting the rambling boy. "Seven-thirty is great."

"Oh… oh, okay." He said. There was an awkward moment of silence.

"Well… good night." Azrael tried, heading for her room again. It took the best of her willpower not to run.

"Good night," he called after her. "And thank you!"

Azrael had never been more grateful to collapse on a well-made bed.

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The next morning Azrael was almost reluctant to pull herself out of bed at six, even though she normally woke up two hours earlier. She even allowed herself the rare pleasure of laying in and staring up at the ceiling for a few minutes, procrastinating the inevitable event of her complete return to the land of the living. She was sure that most others were still asleep.

Finally around six-fifteen she stretched and pulled the covers off of her, sitting up to stretch out her neck and roll her left shoulder, which she appeared to have slept on oddly. It was tense and sore. The floor was unpleasantly cold, but Azrael was far too used to the floorboards at home to be perturbed by it.

She probably wouldn't have seen it if the just-rising sun hadn't been hitting the windowsill at just the right angle. But see it she did, and all at once a chunk of ice seemed to flood her, making her feel almost giddy with dread.

There, stuffed carefully between the crack between the two locked windows, gleaming menacingly in the morning light, was yet another shuriken.

Every muscle in her body tensed at the same time, and blindly Azrael groped for her Pokeballs. They were where she had left them on the bedside table. Closing her fist around the one that held Eevee, she moved slowly towards the window. She wished that she had a weapon on her person. Nearing the windowsill, she pressed herself flat against the wall adjacent and suddenly reached forward, looped her finger into the circle in the middle of the throwing star, and pulled.

It came out in one motion, a quick jerk before the windows jerked apart from each other with an unnecessarily loud rattle. No longer held taut by the shuriken, they rattled against one another in the mild breeze outside.

Azrael threw off the bolt and yanked the windows open, fully expecting some kind of attack. When nothing came, she seemed to breathe again. She hopped up on the bed and leaned out, glancing in either direction, and finally up, just to be sure, before she retreated back into her room and closed—and bolted—the windows again.

Disturbed beyond her normal capacity for alarm, Azrael sat on her bed for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts. She had always had a large capacity for fear—and yet here she was, holding herself in the chilly morning air, holed up in a room, scared to death by a three-inch hunk of metal.

And yet, no matter how much Azrael tried to belittle her fears, she knew why they were rational. Her father had not been a sane man when he'd left them—at best, he'd been fraying apart at the edges. She was not as scared of the deadly looking blade as she was of what it could mean; her father was watching her. And, judging by the haunting clues that seemed to be following her now, he was not looking out for her with fatherly affection.

Azrael was so lost in thought she didn't hear footsteps down the hall until they were passing right by her door. Struck with a sudden impulse, she pulled a pair of jeans on and hastily flung open the door to see who was walking past.

None other than Orion froze dead in his tracks right in front of her open door, almost getting clipped in the jaw by the swinging radius. The two shared an almost comical moment of comprehension.

"Oh," Azrael said. "Oh. Hi. Sorry that I almost hit you." And then, after a moment's consideration, "Why are you up so early?"

Orion seemed to reanimate. "Well, I usually get up around this time or a few hours earlier if I feel like it. I was actually going to check to see what good places there are to eat around here." He smiled at her in a way that made the corners of his blue-green eyes crinkle at the edges. "You care to come along?"

Azrael considered this for a moment, and nodded. "Just give me a moment to change," she said, starting to close the door. "I'll meet you in the lobby."

After she had shut the door on her unlikely companion—if that's even what he was—Azrael leaned up against the still-cool wood. She wasn't sure why, but she felt somehow safer in Orion's presence. She supposed it was rooted deep within her human nature to pack together in numbers for safety, but Azrael couldn't help feeling weak for it. She had always valued her independence and ability to take care of her mother—and her little brother, before he'd left. Now she felt slightly foolish for seeking the company of this blonde-haired stranger simply because he was a warm body and she didn't feel like being alone.

Still slightly lost in her thoughts, Azrael pulled on her dark green turtleneck and hiked up her jeans temporarily to slip into her black boots. After pulling her hair back into an expertly woven braid, she locked her room and headed out to the lobby to meet Orion.

He was waiting for her with his back turned to the rest of the room, leaning on the windowsill and peering out through the misty glass. Unbidden, the image of the shuriken jabbed carefully into the space where the wood met flashed through her mind, and she shook her head to rid herself of the visage.

Orion, alerted to her presence, turned around. The light caught on his gold hair and flashed brilliantly, almost hurting her eyes. When the hazy halo cleared away, he was smiling. "Shall we head out?"